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Ed's Blog

The PIRG-backed TransAtlantic Consumer Dialogue (tacd.org) -- a forum to ensure that trade policies serve consumers -- holds its 17th Annual Meeting in Washington on Tuesday 21 March. The public main event is titled: "A consumer agenda for transatlantic markets: safeguarding protections and making progress in times of political change." On Wednesday, the group sponsors two public side events: (1) Consumer Health, Consumer Action and Antimicrobial Resistance and (2) Empowering and Protecting Youth in the Big Data Era.

The CFPB is doing incredible work defending consumers. You may not know how much of that work involves cleaning up the sloppy credit bureaus. Congressional and special interest attacks on the CFPB will slow all or stop all CFPB work. It will let the bureaus run amok, again, placing your credit score and financial opportunity and job prospects at risk.

While powerful special interests, Senators, the Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee and the White House call for dismantling the CFPB, firing its excellent director, or worse, CFPB continues to be an agency that is on the job, conducting business as usual to protect consumers. Its latest "Monthly Complaint Snapshot" is an open window into the many reasons we need a strong CFPB.

Despite an escalation of threats to exterminate the Consumer FInancial Protection Bureau, CFPB continues to protect consumers well. This week it sued TCF Bank over deceptive overdraft marketing schemes and it sued Navient, the student loan servicer and Sallie Mae spinoff, for "failing" students at every step of the repayment process. The TCF complaint notes that its CEO brazenly named his boat "Overdraft."